User blog:MacTheEpic/Epic (120: Boom II: Electric Boomaloo)
Hell yeah boys we hit the milestone Episode 120 boiiiiiiiiiiiiii Anyways, in other news, I checked out ZT recently because apparently everyone has been these days. Did you know it's been almost a year (10-11 months) since the mods chose another spotlight member? alright but seriously I'll just go ahead and get on with the show We only have like 50 episodes a season so we're almost halfway through and the plot of this season hasn't even progressed halfway lol also be warned this episode is really long lmao ---- POV: Cat "-And that's why I'm afraid of peaches." I finished, and looked over to Bookie, to whom I had just recounted a traumatic experience in my life to. She was still deeply invested in her book, she was, in fact, almost done with it. She had just started it when I began my story, and now she was approaching its final pages. "B-Bookie?" I stuttered. "What?" she asked, her eyes ping-ponging back and forth across the pages of her book. "Were you listening?" I asked, sort of embarassed. "Listening to what?" she asked. "Well," I started to begin my story again, "Back when I was a young lad in Austria..." "You're not austrian." She pointed out. "Oh, so THAT you hear?" I crossed my arms. She shrugged. "I wish Rad was here, me and him are tight." I bragged. "What's your point?" She asked, turning a page in her book. "Well, I bet he'd listen to my peach story." I said. "Oh, I was listening." She assured. "Oh really, then what did I-" I was interrupted. "You were talking about how you're afraid of peaches because one day you were sitting under a peach tree and a peach fell on you and you brought the peach to show and tell and then tried to convince everyone you were the reincarnation of Isaac Newton because a peach fell on your head but then your teacher pointed out it was an APPLE that fell on Isaac Newton's head, not a peach, so then you were embarassed in front of the whole class and you were bullied and called 'peach head' for the rest of your entire childhood." She summed up the entire story perfectly. But I wasn't gonna let her win. "Well actually, you're wrong." I said, amazingly disproving her story. "Whatever." She shrugged. "I'll have you know-" I began, but was interrupted by the computer monitor beeping loudly. Bookie looked up from her book for the first time in about an hour or so. "What is it?" she asked. "The computer was scanning the EMP files Rad and I found, it must've found something of interest." I concluded, putting my hand on the computer mouse. Abbey was letting us watch over her desk (and computer) while she was off talking to Charlie about some weapons Mac looted off of Ragde. She told us to let her know whatever the computer finds. I looked at the monitor, a small window was open. It had text written on it that said: "THIS COMPUTER HAS LOCATED MULTIPLE IMAGES, WRITINGS, AND TEXTS OF INTEREST. CONTINUE?" I clicked yes, and it gave me a list of things of interest that it had found. "What does it say?" asked Bookie. I looked down the list the computer had given me, it all seemed to be made up of things we already knew. "It's more of what we already know, like how it can be used to spread the infected air which contains the mind-toxins that control people... um... it can be used as a regular EMP... again, more of the stuff we already know." I responded. "What else is there?", Bookie looked back down at her book. I kept looking down the list, until I found one that stood out. "Here we go, it says it can be used as a beacon by shooting a ray of pure electromagnetic energy into the sky." I brought up. "What would you need a beacon for?" she asked, closing the book and looking at it's back. "Maybe those 'Arukians' that everyones talking about." I suggested. "According to Erik, humanity has to find the Arukians on their own, they won't come to us." Bookie reminded. "Right." I agreed. I scrolled down a bit further down the list but couldn't find much. "I think that's it." I told her. "That can't be it." Bookie said, furrowing her brow. "Let's go back to the mind-toxin thing. The list doesn't specifically say it's used for mind-toxins, it can just be used for liquid-to-gas or simple gas dispersion." I scrolled back up the list. "So..?" Bookie looked over to me, "What's your point?" "Well, back at the EMP base where I picked up these files, there was mention of a serum sample around the lab, and just a smell of the sample of it was strong enough to kill someone. Maybe Ssenkrad'll try to disperse that instead of it's mind-toxins." I theorized. Bookie shook her head, "They probably meant a liquid sample of C-012. C-012 in it's liquid form is highly concentrated and can overwhelm the mind and kill you, you can only handle it using gas masks." "Well, what about that other serum," I laid back in the chair, "the one Mac's team brought back?" "That serum flat-out kills you. And plus, apparently it's incomplete according to Ima and Blah." Bookie walked over to a bookcase that was planted against a wall. She put back her book that she finished, examined the other books, grabbed one, and walked back to her chair and sat down. "Maybe he wants to disperse the complete version of the serum," I continued, "Or maybe he wants to kill everyone by dispersing the incomplete version, I wouldn't put that past Ssenkrad." We sat there in silence for a good moment or two, until I noticed the floating orb in a capsule on the desk. "Is that what 13 brought back?" I asked. Bookie nodded. "What is it?" I reached out to touch the capsule. "I wouldn't do that if I were you." She said, opening her book. I stopped, my hand still frozen in place, extending out towards the capsule. "Why?" "Because, A.) We don't know what it is, or what it does. And B.) It's temperature rivals that of a smaller sun and is only barely contained by that capsule." She licked her finger and turned the page in her book. "Why can't Ima and Blah take a look at it?" I asked. "Like I said, it has an absurdly high temperature, they need special gear to examine it, like heat resistant suits and stuff. Stuff we don't have. And even then, they took a look at it without any of the gear and still didn't have any guesses to what it's made of, what it does, etc." She explained. "Can I do anything to help? I could get them the gear or something." I offered. Bookie shook her head, "No, they said they're already working on creating the suits by themselves." "Alright." I nodded and went back to examining the list on the computer. I looked at the clock on the bottom-right corner of the monitor. It was exactly 9 PM. Rad and Rue should've just arrived at their mission area to get the serum sample they need to cure Mac. I looked over to Bookie, "Wait, aren't you supposed to be giving Rad and Rue intel since they're out on a mission?" Bookie shrugged, "I'm sure they'll be fine." ---- POV: Rad "Bookie! Bookie! Come in!" I pressed my hand against my earpiece. "Anything?" asked Rue, who was wearing blue camoflauge that didn't really fit with any of the surroundings. I shook my head. Rue was lying prone in the tall grass, his 'camoflauge' made him stand out since, like I said, it didn't really fit. I was wearing a regular black shirt, to blend into the night, I wore dark pants as well. "You know you're not blending in at all, right?" I told him. He took out a pair of binoculars, and examined the building which was no more than half a mile away. "I've played all of the Metal Gear games, I know what I'm doing." He smiled, "Anyway, since Bookie isn't answering, we'll have to figure out our own intel." I grabbed the binoculars from him, "Gimme that." I said. "Hey!" He protested. I looked through the binoculars and looked at the factory. There were quite a few things of note. The factory was surrounded by a fence, an electric one. The fence covered the entirety of the outside of the factory. It went all the way around, as well as the top, boxing in the factory. The factory was in a surprising juxtaposition to the rest of the landscape. The land around the factory contained within the fence was barren, but everything outside the fence was grassy, and looked surprisingly full of life with flowers and trees. Keyword: looked. The grass was all fake, of course. You could tell just by touching it. Ssenkrad implanted fake nature to replace what he destroyed, and to further convince people he 'cared', when in reality the true nature remained destroyed and what was left was merely a placeholder and a reminder of what once was. The trees and flowers are fake too. The "flowers" don't smell like anything and the "trees" are hollow. And back to the topic of the factory, it didn't really look like one. There were no long tubes puffing out smoke, there was ''an unpleasant smell surrounding the area, but not a smoke smell. The outside of the factory wasn't a dirty gray, it actually looked like a clean white. There was no noticeable entrance to the building besides the front, which you needed to get past the gate to reach. "See anything?" asked Rue. "No entrances besides the front, it seems." I responded. "Look harder, you'll find something." He adjusted his position in the grass. I looked around the surroundings of the fence, again, nothing but fake grass. But then I noticed a tree that was closer to the factory than the others. "Well, maybe that tree over there has something." I suggested. Rue sat up, and looked over to the tree near the factory. "You're kidding, right?" He chuckled. "No, it has some weird abnormal growth on the side of it, I think it's worth checking out." I lowered the binoculars. I motioned Rue to follow, "Come on." Rue grunted, "Fine." "You know, you're the one who dragged me on this mission, I should be the reluctant one, you should be leading." I told him. Rue shrugged, we both crouched down in the tall grass and started to stealthily walk to the tree. When we were getting close, Rue stopped me and pulled out two gas masks, he gave one to me and he put one on for himself. "Right. Almost forgot." I took the gas mask and put it on. "These gas filters'll only last us about an hour, so we have to hurry. If it runs out while we're in there, we'll die because of how concentrated the serum is." He tightened his gas mask. I nodded, and we kept moving and finally made it to the tree. I cautiously stood up, making sure no one was watching from inside the factory or otherwise. I examined the weird growth on the side of the tree, it was in the middle of the tree, and jutted out in something that resembled a doorknob. "Well? What is it?" asked Rue, who was still crouched down in the tall grass. "It looks sort of like a doorknob, but I don't think I can turn it or anything, it looks stiff." I told him, putting my hand on the wooden 'doorknob'. "Can you at least try?" Rue was getting slightly impatient, "We're wasting the time on our filters." I tried to turn it, but it wouldn't budge. "It's not working." I turned to Rue, who cautiously stood up as well. "You're turning it to the left, maybe it needs to be turned..." he grabbed the 'doorknob', and turned it to the right, the doorknob surprisingly moved and suddenly a door seemed to carve itself in the tree, the door let out some steam and opened, "....to the right." Rue finished and looked at me with a smile. When the door opened, we could see that the interior of the 'tree' looked very different from the exterior. It had a small, white, circular floor, and the interior seemed to be enveloped in a white, circular, wall. We stepped through door and into the tree. There was barely enough room for both of us. The inside seemed to be an elevator, there was a button panel with just two buttons, up and down. Considering I we couldn't go the other direction, I clicked Down and Rue then proceeded to complain that he wanted to press the button. The door closed and we felt the small we were in descending, and then we felt ourselves move backwards, left, right, and then down again, until finally we stopped, and the door opened. We were no longer outside, and were in, what I can only assume, was the factory. The walls of the factory were completely blue. In fact, the walls seem to match Rue's camoflauge perfectly. Rue looked over to me and mouthed, "Told you so." The room was filled with people wearing lab coats and gas masks, I can only assume they were scientists, they were all standing over desks which seemed to be lined in endless rows and rows of more desks and even more people working with chemicals of all sorts of colors. And, shattering Rue's dream of sneaking in stealthily, some of them looked over to us. But they seemed indifferent and went back to work. I looked over to Rue, who shrugged to hide the pain of his broken dream. I stepped out of the elevator, Rue was closely following. We walked in between the rows and rows of desks together, being careful not to bump into any of the scientists and disturb their work. "What does this serum look like, anyway? It's sort of hard to tell with all the chemicals in this room." I whispered behind me to Rue. "I'm not sure, maybe we should ask around." He suggested. "Are you serious?" I asked, still carefully walking in between the rows, looking at the desks for any items of interes. "You got any better ideas?" said Rue, a bit frustrated. "I guess not." I sighed. I was in the middle of looking for someone to ask about the serum when a man, dressed with a black suit and tie, and a gas mask, stopped us. "Halt. What are you two doing in this area? The lab is only for officials or workers of Clearance Level 4B. I don't even see clearance tags on you guys." The man said sternly, frowning. "U-uhm." I struggled to come up with an excuse. "Oh, Leonard, stop it." An short, old man, with balding white hair and a stained lab coat but without a gas mask suddenly appeared next to the man in the suit, who I could assume was named Leonard. "They're the ones who've been sent to pick up another crate of C-012 for dispersion in the nearby cities, you imbecile!" said the short old man. "Oh, I- I'm sorry. They just look a bit young and... they're wearing really dumb clothing to be part of the dispersion crew." Leonard smiled sheepishly and scratched his head. "Now why would Lord Ssenkrad waste older, smarter, men on simple jobs such as this? You idiot, get out of my face, go bother someone else." commanded the old man. "Ok, sorry." mumbled Leonard as he shuffled off in defeat. The old man turned to us, "I apologize for that, boys. Leonard means well but he's an idiot. I suppose I should introduce myself, I'm Dr. Zokov. I'm the head of this facility. Here we produce the serum you're no doubt familiar with, serum C-012." He smiled as he said that. He seemed to show pride in the product. He started to walk and motioned for us to follow, "Please, follow me. I'll show you to the crate, you can pick it up and be on your way." Rue and I were walking side by side, looking at eachother. We were having a silent conversation on what to do. Since we were getting nowhere, I decided to simply ask for more information. "Say, what can you tell us about this facility?" I asked. Zokov chuckled, "Oh, how it delights me to hear that the young are taking interest in the work of our good and gracious Lord Ssenkrad." "Well," he cleared his throat, "this facility creates each C-012 serum by hand, to ensure quality in each drop of the serum. As you know, Serum C-012 is dispersed in every major city using dispersion towers. There is this one city that doesn't use a dispersion tower but instead uses some sort of structure that produces massive amounts of electromagnetic energy, but instead Ssenkrad uses it to disperse the mind-toxins. I don't know why, so don't ask me." We approached a door, he opened it and walked through, we followed. The room we were in now was stacked with boxes, it looked sort of like a small warehouse. There were crates on top of crates on top of crates. Each had big black letters painted on them, "C-012". "I actually created the formula for serum C-012, you know. It's why I don't wear a gas mask. I'm immune to it's effects." He proudly explained. "Wait, so you follow Ssenkrad willingly? You don't need the serum to control you?" I asked in disbelief. "Control is a very harsh word for what the serum does, I prefer the word... enlighten." Zokov took a deep breath, and exhaled, "Ahhhhh." Rue and I looked at eachother. "What about this building? We know about the serum, but what can you tell us about the building?" asked Rue. "You want to know about the architecture?" Zokov scoffed, "Alright, I suppose I could." "The room you were just in was the lab, where all of the serum is hand-crafted. The room you're in currently is the warehouse where we store all the C-012 we make, and we ship it off to the other cities, or, in some cases, ask boys like you to pick it up and bring it to them. And then there's the control room which is right below this facility, there lie the controls for the generators, which are a floor below them." He explained, walking towards a small crate, which he picked up. "Here," he said, thrusting the crate towards me, "the serum for your city." I took the crate from him, I thanked him and tried to act as grateful as I could to hide my disgust. "So... what exactly does the control room do in regards to the generators? Can you control the power sent to them and stuff? What else is there to do down there?" Rue asked. Zokov straightened his jacket, "Yes, you can control the power the generators control, you can overload them, or underload them, whatever. There's an intercom down there, among other things. But only people with clearance level 7Z are allowed down there, which only I have, so I'm afraid I can't give you a peek." he cleared his throat. "Come on, just one peek." begged Rue. I looked over to Rue, concerned, who gave me a look of assurance, as if to say, "I know what I'm doing." "No, you boys are already being too nosy as it is. I appreciate you taking an interest in the work of our Lord Ssenkrad, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave and take the crate with you." growled Zokov, crossing his arms. "WOAH, DR. ZOKOV, IT'S A FLYING MOOSE!" announced Rue, his finger pointing to the wall behind Zokov. "WHERE? THOSE DAMN FLYING MOOSES ARE ALWAYS MESSING AROUND IN MY FACTORY!" angrily yelled Zokov, who turned around and looked for a flying moose which was not there. When Zokov realized it had been a trick, he angrily turned around but his face was met by the hard force of Rue's fist, which knocked Zokov out instantly. Rue rubbed his hand, "Ow, that actually hurt." "What the hell was that about!?" I questioned Rue, who had punched the old guy without giving me any warning. "I have an idea." He simply said, as if that explained his actions. Rue knelt down over Zokov and started to check the old man's pockets. "Aha!", he pulled out a card from Zokov's jacket, "Clearance Tag 7Z. We can get in the control room now." He grinned and looked over to me for approval, but I was still confused. "I don't get it, we got what we needed, why do we need to go in the control room?" I asked him. "Simple, we're gonna blow this place up!" he said, a little loud, but not enough for the people in the other room to hear. "WHA-" I calmed my voice down and took a breath, "Rue, there's tons of people in here! We can't just kill them all!" "I never said that, we don't need to kill everyone, we just need to destroy the building and all of the equipment so that way they can't produce more of the serum, hopefully for good, but at the very least it'll stop the production for a good while." He explained. "Alright, but how are we " I asked, but instead of waiting for an answer, I realized it myself. "The intercom." I concluded. "Bingo." He smiled, "we use the intercom to make an announcement to evacuate the facility, and then we blow it up!" Rue was surprisingly enthusiastic about this idea. "Well, what about him? He's probably not waking up anytime soon." I pointed to the unconcious Zokov. "Leave him. He's old. Plus he's the one who created the serum, remember?" He reminded me. I nodded, "Alright, fine. Let's go find the control room." He motioned towards an elevator on the other side of the room. We jogged over to it, it took me a while since I was still holding the crate of serum in my arms. We noticed a scanning panel next to the elevator, Rue raised the clearance tag he looted from Zokov, the panel scanned it, turned green, and the elevator opened. "'WELCOME, DOCTOR ZOKOV." announced the elevator. We entered it and pressed the "CR" button on the panel, which we assumed stood for Control Room. The elevator ride was brief, and we arrived to the control room in seconds. The control room was pretty small, there were only two desks, right next to each other. One desk was filled with buttons and control panels, which I assume controlled the generators. And the other had a microphone connected to a box, which I assume was the intercom. We debated over who would blow up the facility, so we played paper rock scissors to decide. I lost, so I got stuck with the intercom. '''): "Hey Rue," I started to ask. "Yeah?" He replied, examining all the buttons on the control desk. "What's a safe distance from an explosion?" I inquired. "Um, I don't know. But for this building... I'd say about a quarter to a half mile." He responded. I nodded, and pressed the button on the intercom to talk. "Attention," I said with a thick german accent, "EVERYONE LEAVE THE FACILITY AND RETREAT TO A DISTANCE OF HALF MILE AWAY FROM THE FACILITY." I announced loudly. "He didn't have a german accent." laughed Rue, who was pressing random buttons. "They're mindless Ssenkrad zombies, I'm sure they won't care." I replied. We heard a stampede of footsteps above us. "They must be evacuating." I told him. "Yep, let's just hope they can get far enough away from the blast in time. I'm about to overload the generators." Rue was having too much fun with this. Rue turned a bunch of knobs labelled "LOW POWER - HIGH POWER", and turned them all to high power. "ALERT. ALERT. CRITICAL OVERLOADING IMMINENT. ALERT. ALERT. CRITICAL OVERLOADING IMMINENT." announced the control desk Rue was still messing around on. I grabbed the crate of the serum on the ground. "Rue, let's go!" I yelled. Rue let go of the control desk and nodded, he motioned for me to follow as we ran in the elevator. "I don't think we thought this through. How the hell are we going to get out of here in time!?" I panicked. "Relaaaaaaax." said Rue, "I put EVERYTHING on high power." As if that should calm me. "THAT'S SUPPOSED TO MAKE ME FEEL BETTER? THAT JUST MEANS WE HAVE LESS TIME TO ESCAPE!" I shouted. "I don't think you get what I'm saying. I put EVERYTHING on high power." he smiled as he pressed the UP button on the elevator to return to the warehouse room we were in once before. Only we weren't going to be returning to the warehouse. The elevator suddenly started rising amazingly fast, far faster than before. The sheer force of it almost made me fall, but I didn't because I was holding on to the metal railing so tight I could've probably left an indentation of my hand on it. Rue was smiling, but he was almost knocked down too when the elevator shook violently and we heard a loud CRASH. I looked up at the elevator ceiling and saw the night sky. It then became apparent we were riding in a GLASS elevator. I looked down at the building below, there were two square shaped holes, one for the ceiling, and one for the electric fence above it, we had broken through the top of the building and had been launched into the sky. I straightened myself up and picked up the crate on the elevator floor that I had dropped when we were suddenly launched upward. I looked over at Rue, who seemed to be enjoying the view the glass elevator allowed him. I was as well, until we both heard a loud rumble and we looked down and saw that the facility had exploded. I looked over to the left of it, and saw that a large group of people were a safe distance from it, but still running away from it nonetheless. "The scientists got out safe." I tapped Rue on his shoulder and pointed at the large group of people. "See? Everything turned out okay." smiled Rue, as he leaned back on the elevator railing. I began to think so too as well. The glass elevator we were in reminded me of that Willy Wonka story. But unfortunately this wasn't a magic elevator. It was still susceptible to gravity. We felt the elevator's momentum slowing, and we started to plummet down. "You just had to jinx it, didn't you?" I growled at Rue, as we were both falling down back to the ground. But, surprisingly, awaiting the end of our fall (and instant doom), something miraculous happened. It turns out the elevator IS magic and is installed with gear that slows it down in case it ever falls from a high distance just like we were doing. The elevator's impact compensation hardware kicked in (a parachute was activated at the top). And we gently landed on the ground, next to the burning facility we blew up. We stood in silence there, sort of surprised at our luck. We blew up the serum facility, the crate with the serum was still intact so we could cure Mac and Cat, and we got out alive. Rue opened his mouth and said, "That was fun." "I don't know what you're talking about. I did all the work." I joked. "Nah nah nah, I'll have you know I pretty much single-handedly carried this entire operation." he laughed. "Well, we made a pretty decent team I guess." I told him. "Decent?" he raised a brow. "Alright, we were pretty good." I admitted. Rue smiled, "C'mon, lets get going before Ssenkrad's henchmen show up." I picked up the serum crate, and we walked off to the evac zone, ready to go back to base after a long mission. (End of Episode) ---- Yeah, this episode was pretty long, but I hope you guys enjoyed, it definitely took me a while. Feedback is always greatly appreciated. As always, if you have any questions feel free to ask (if it involves spoilers or something I probably won't be able to answer but I'll try) like if you need me to clear up anything just feel free to shoot a question at me. Anyways, there is more coming soon, as you probably noticed the gap between this episode and the last one was shorter, I'm not gonna lie I just wanted to hit that number 120 baby Because it's a milestone. Anyway, thank you guys for reading. Mac Out! Category:Blog posts